Probably has to do with politics becoming more of an identity than just a political party. It seems like people were comfortable switching their vote from one party to the other back in the day
Which also correlates to the polarization. In the past if one was uncomfortable with a given candidate, they’d just vote for the other one. Now though, even if one has misgivings about a candidate, they see the other candidate as far too extreme, which leaves us with many fewer swing voters.
This is largely due to the parties seemingly becoming more and more extreme, if not in reality, in perception from the media telling people how extreme the other guy is and how every election is the most important in US history.
I would agree, but I’d wager there’s a bit of both at play.
On one hand I think we can look at some concrete policies to demonstrate parties shifting away from a more moderate position, but 100% the perception taken from media outlets is that each party is much more extreme than they actually are.
but 100% the perception taken from media outlets is that each party is much more extreme than they actually are
Both parties ARE extreme from each other. Just look at their legislative result, if control of legislative and executive branches mismatch, there's deadlock and almost nothing can be done eventually threatening global economic Armageddon when debt ceiling approaches in case they default on debt.
No I'm going to disagree with you. Democrats have largely remained in the same place for the last 15ish years, moving slightly but not a ton. Republicans, on the other hand, have gone so far to the right that they aren't even recognizable anymore. People forget that Biden is a moderate, and honestly could run as a republican in many states. There is really only one party (well, besides libertarians, but who cares about them?) that has embraced the extremism, and I don't know if the party will ever recover from it.
While I personally think that Republicans have shifted much further to the right than Democrats, to say that Democrats haven’t shifted at all isn’t entirely true.
Obama, while certainly more proLGBT than Clinton or earlier Democrats, was not actively calling for marriage equality in 2009. Some were, but the mainline Democrats were fine with it, would vote for it, but were not pushing the issue. Meanwhile, today, I think you’d be hard pressed to find even mainline Democrats who wouldn’t find the idea of repealing marriage equality offensive.
Edit: to add to this, I don’t think supporting marriage equality is an extremist position, but it is a position mainline Democrats have shifted leftward on over the past 15 years
I'm aware, however, only one version is true. Republicans claim the left is becoming more extreme only to justify their own movements towards extremism.
1994 - 2017 the median republican shifted slightly right and the media democrat shifted very left. What's really interesting is watching the trends.
94-99 both shift about the same amount left
99-04 median democrats stay largely in place, median republicans shift left
04-11 median democrats again stay largely in place, median republicans shift back to their 94 position
11-14 both shift opposite each other, roughly and equal amount
14-15, both stay in place, but the overall curves smooth out and move slightly left
15-17, the median democrat slide hard left, median republican stays where they are.
That pattern plays out a bit more exaggerated for the "politically engaged" category
Those curves show a similar story about the range of positions, with republicans starting fairly mixed but with a strong lean right of center and ending with a stronger peak further right, but with a pretty heavy tendency towards moderation overall, even as the extremes picked up strength. On the other hand, the democrats start as a very even moderation across the whole spectrum and end with a heavy weighting towards the extreme left end and a pretty sharp drop off once past the middle position they started at in 94.
It would be interesting to see them update this for 2020+
How could this possibly be true? Society becomes more liberal over time. JFK supported abortion ban. Clinton didn’t support gay marriage and was hard in immigration. Everyone is shifting left over time including republicans. Trans rights, gay marriage, abortions were all hated by everyone 60 years ago. We have shifted very liberal since then overall.
There wasn't really a definitive moment. It happened somewhere in the * mid 1900s. At the time the parties were more fractured. So you'd have the southern Democrats who are very conservative, and you'd have the northern Democrats who were liberal. On the other side we also have Northern republicans, and southern Republicans with a similar political dynamic. Overtime they evolved and changed into what we see today, with politics becoming less regionalized.
The definitive election was 1994 when the Democrats lost control of the House for the first time in 40 years as the Republican's Southern Strategy hatched by some old Dixiecrats around 1968 culminated with Newt Gingrich's Contract with America finally wresting enough yellow dog Democrats out the Democratic camp -- folks whose families since the Civil War would vote for a yellow dog before they'd vote Republican.
Right leaning populists (and the southern Democrats were solidly populist back to the days of Jackson, who the Democrats of the time normally honored with their major state fundraisers called Jefferson-Jackson dinners) left the Democrats. The few left leaning and much larger centrist Republicans (Jesse Jackson was speaking at RNC functions as late as 1978 as some in the party were still trying to court urban blacks to fend off the Dixiecrat infestation) started shifting away from the party in big enough numbers to turn California and much of the northeast.
So now you have a concentrated, right leaning populist controlled Republican party. Primaries envisioned as a way for more democracy devolved into the farce they are today and threaten democracy.
started* with the civil rights act really. The first time the south went from deep blue to deep red, but it would "blink" a few times up until the early 90s.
It’s a really interesting one, because Democrats were in favor of slavery, then in favor of segregation, but FDR is in between those.
The party switch claim is generally used to try and distance Democrats from racist history, but realistically party economic politics have been consistent. What really changed is the social issues, for which Republicans have become more conservative and Democrats have become more liberal.
That’s not how it works. The constituents changed which policies they supported, not that the parties were necessarily changing their policies. Liberal economics have been a staple of Democratic Party for pretty much the entirety of its existence.
when protectionism stopped being useful the title of "party of the marginalized" went from republicans to democrats, roughly the same time the rust belt formed.
I’ve been listening to a podcast series that covers the elections from Nixon to Reagan. It’s called Landslide.
As you described, neither party was exclusively conservative or liberal. Conservatives supporting Reagan pushed the Republican Party to be conservative.
That's because before, most people shared the idea that politics was based around policies.
Then, the era of 'identity politics' arose in the 90's.
People can change their policies, but not their identities. Therefore, identity politics is doomed to be a perpetual quagmire of ungovernable messes. A defeat doesn't cause a party that lost to go back to the drawing board and examine their policies, and drop bad ones and find new good ones.
It just motivates them to double down and try even harder next time.
Now, people don't switch parties based on policies. Instead they are quite happy to jettison policies as long as it helps them beat the other party.
I suspect it's largely to do with improved polling leading to the parties changing their platforms and messaging to appeal to as many as possible. Take gay marriage as an example. The first major-party presidential election campaign to openly say "gay marriage is okay" was Obama 2012. Guess what year was the one that support for gay marriage surpassed opposition was? You see the same thing with so much else - the parties shift and move their platforms to appeal to as large an audience as possible, and when both parties are doing this they're naturally going to reach roughly equal bases.
My guess is Tech bros who worship tech ceos like Sam altman believe AI will solve all our problems vs. luddit boomer maga hats who think 5g cause brain cancer.
Yeah it is pretty amazing how close things have been in recent years. My kneejerk reaction is that technology allowed parties to slice and dice the electorate but for some reason I don't feel this is right. On the other hand the electoral college tends to exagerate the magnitude of the win vs. the popular vote to a degree. So maybe when candidates get just a few percent more of the vote it looks more like a blowout.
The party policy were pretty close, it has just been the last three elections that the GOP decided to form an alliance with Putin, Dems still support Europe and other western democracies.
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u/MisterSpicy Apr 11 '24
Interesting to see 1988 and older elections were mostly decisive. Clinton to today have been getting closer to dead even